Persepolis and The Children's Bookstore

I'm in the midst of teaching Persepolis with my 9th graders again, and I couldn't be happier. The books were a gift from The Children's Bookstore here in Baltimore; as part of their Educational Foundation program, which donates class sets of books to teachers and students (once a year per teacher), they granted our school around 350 copies of the text, one for every 9th grader. In other words, if you are looking for a great charity to support that directly puts books in the hands of Baltimore City students, then this is one I can vouch for. This is the second year in a row that they have supported me in the teaching of this book. A big public "thank you" to everyone involved over at The Children's Bookstore Educational Foundation!

Anyhow, as with last year, my students are really enjoying the book. Many came in the day after I had passed it out, proud of themselves for having went home and completed the entire book in one night. It's so neat to hear them analyze books using new terms, but fitting those terms into our standard "author's technique and effect" conversations about literature. I started off the unit by using much of this excellent lesson, which links to a fairly extensive list of graphic novels terms that we have been using. Never a comic book reader, I have learned a lot in the teaching of this novel, easily as much as my students have.

So far, we're only about five chapters into the story, but today we had an excellent little Socratic Seminar about chapter 3, and the students really did a good job of grappling with Satrapi's techniques and what effects they brought about. Tonight, students are choosing one panel in each of the next three chapters to write a paragraph of analysis about any three panels, using the vocabulary and technique/effect language. That will be a springboard for tomorrow's discussion.

********** Below is my proposal to The Children's Bookstore, which I think is pretty good but I can't quite believe I used the phrase "common humanity that links us all" twice in it... a bit cheesy************

January 29, 2008


The Children’s Bookstore Educational Foundation

737 Deepdene Rd.

Baltimore, MD 21210


To whom it may concern:

Last year, The Children’s Bookstore generously provided a copy of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis to each of my students. The experience was an enchanting one for my students and me. We learned about the culture of Iran, and about the troubling experience of coming of age in a society as repressive as that one. We learned about the structure of graphic novels, and analyzed how authors use pictures and words to tell a story. Most importantly, we learned about the common humanity that links us all, and saw how growing up in an unjust world has common threads across cultures. Students found the graphic novel style fresh and engaging, and the story captivating.

The unit was so successful that we are expanding it to all the ninth grade classes and, as chair of the ninth grade team, I am requesting Persepolis I for all ninth graders at ______________.

The following details the unit, goals, and projected activities and projects of the unit, which we are planning on teaching in April of 2008.

Teaching Unit: Coming of Age in the Middle-east: Examining the Graphic Novel

Curriculum Goals:

Throughout the course, students have examined coming-of-age stories from around the world, including the 1930s Alabama (To Kill a Mockingbird), 1500s Verona (Romeo and Juliet), 1950s Pittsburgh (Fences), 1980s Chicago (House on Mango Street), and ancient Greece (Telamachus' story in The Odyssey). Students have studied how injustice affects the growing up process, and how our response to injustice helps define how successful our coming of age is. This examination of these characters from different cultures, ethnicities, eras, genders, and perspectives will help students develop empathy and navigate their own coming of age in an unjust society. Persepolis details this same theme, in war-torn Iran in the early 1980s. We will use the text as a springboard for cultural connections, in order to examine the common humanity that unites us all.

Currently available texts and resources: None. Students are required to provide all of their own materials for English class.

Related activities and projects:

The study of the graphic novel as a relevant literary genre, including guest speaker experts in the genre
* Researching history and politics of middle-east and how it affects the people living within the area
* Examine universal themes and connections between cultures
* As a way of exploring effects of genre: Re-writing a section of a previously-studied novel as a graphic novel; writing portion of Satrapi’s graphic novel as prose
* Presentation on setting of Iran, including guest speakers from the country

Thank you so much for considering my proposal.

Ring Dilemma

A couple of months ago, one of my players asked me to hold his class ring during practice. Players often do that; it's usually not rings, but sometimes it's cell phones, or keys, or something else. I put it in my bag and didn't think anything else of it.

The player didn't ask for his ring back after practice. And I forgot about it. A few weeks later, the kid failed off the team. I don't even have a failing-off conversation with him, as he just left his uniform with another player and I don't often run into him. I like the kid, but I'm not particularly close with him, and I kept him on the team hoping that I'd be able to get through to him somehow; as for baseball abilities, he'd picked up his first baseball glove at 17.

About a week ago, he came up to me in the hallway and said, "Hey, _______, you still have my ring?"

I didn't remember anything differently, so I said, "Yeah, I guess so. It's gotta still be in my bag."

Well, you guessed it, the ring isn't in my bag. I don't remember giving it back to him, and I don't think he's taking me for a ride. But the ring is $450.

My first instinct was, "Dang, I guess I've got to pay for that whole thing." Then, I got another opinion from a colleague and another player, who both said that no way I was responsibile, that kids assume risks by giving me things, and that I only agreed to hold onto it for practice, not for weeks afterwards. He forgot to ask for it back, so it's his fault more than anyone else's.

Tonight, the young man's mother called me. She's cordial, but it's very clear she wants me to pay for the ring, the whole thing.

As for me, I'm no longer sure. One issue is certainly ability to pay. I have three more paychecks before the summer, and not quite enough money to make it through the summer as it is (putting a downpayment on my house was the priority with my summer money, though I'm hoping to amend my taxes and get the tax credit soon). Paying for the ring would take quite a bit of saving, and I just couldn't do it before the summer.

I do feel guilty about it and want to do the right thing. I just don't want to be taken for a ride in the process. I think I'm going to talk with my principal about it tomorrow.

I'm still holding onto shreds of hope that it will turn up as I unpack things. I did just move, after all.

UPDATE: I FOUND IT! MOMENTS AFTER POSTING! IN MY JACKET POCKET! A JACKET THAT I WEAR FAIRLY OFTEN, SO I'M BLESSED IT DIDN'T FALL OUT SOMETIME IN THE LAST COUPLE OF MONTHS! (At least it got me blogging again.)

[I am kind of curious, especially now that it's over with, about whether you all think I would have had to pay all $425 to replace it. Legally Required vs. Ethically required?)

Rain, rain, go away

I have not been blogging much lately. It's been hard. Baseball season has been keeping me plenty busy, as well as frustrated because of all the rain, and busy-ness and frustration are not catalysts for writing.

However, after a couple of weeks of complete exhaustion in the classroom, I'm starting to feel my mojo again, and that makes me more excited to share stories and such. My 9th graders are working on an A Lesson Before Dying essay, and it's going well. My 11th graders are finishing up essays over The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and beginning Frankenstein.

But the rain... the rain... it has rained out so many games this season that we didn't meet the 14-game minimum to be seeded for playoffs. The MPSSAA offered no flexibility in its seeding for playoffs, which I think is just wrong; the city teams were screwed over because we just don't have the staffs and facilities that county schools have to fix up fields. Thus, we're playing a pretty tough opponent in the opening round of playoffs, not to mention a number of games were canceled with no makeup, including the game with our big rival.

It's tough to keep the kids (and their coach) focused, but I'm going to do my best tomorrow, with our last practice before the playoffs, which start on Friday. I'm trying to ignore the loud storm outside my window right now. This has been an absolutely unbelievable spring.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

It happened for the first time. I got called Paul Blart* today by a student. It was in a joking, gently teasing way, but it was still a good reminder to get myself back to the gym. I tore my calf muscle (just degree 1 or 2, according to the doctor, so not a big deal) a couple of weeks ago and was on crutches for three days - teaching on crutches sure isn't very fun, makes me feel very lazy - but today it feels healed, or at least well enough to exercise. I even hit some softballs today at the batting cages, where our baseball team went for practice to escape the heat.

* The rumors I intentionally spread last year that I was Kevin James' cousin - to the point where I showed my students the name "Kevin" on my cell phone, telling them it was him - probably didn't help matters much. But I get the Kevin James/King of Queens ("only not as fat", uh thanks) comment so much from kids that I had to do something with it.

Only in Baltimore

We finished our game this afternoon, at Sloman's Field off of Windsor Mill Road, and the fifteen of us (all uniformed baseball players) were waiting around for the bus to return when a guy from the neighborhood approached and mumbled something to us. I didn't hear him, and asked him to say it again. He said that he wanted to get something out of our way. He shooed a kid away from a park bench, got on his knees, and dug lifted up a clump of grass that was sitting on top of some wood chips. Underneath, he removed a bag filled with a few grams of heroin, set the grass clump back, and walked away.

Yes, the man was hiding his narcotics on a children's playground.

The kids barely batted an eye and went back to wrestling, joking, and killing time. We all kind of did.

National Day of Service - with one of my students

One of my students planted trees with Barack Obama today! He was actually paired up with the President - just the two of them.

He's one of these students here, standing right next to Michelle. According to his chat with me on Facebook just now, he got a hug from her, and he got to keep Obama's work gloves as a keepsake. Pretty amazing.

Internet access limited...

Hi all!

I have absolutely no unblocked internet access these days unless I go to a public library, hence the lack of updates!

But I've moved into the new house, and I'm still coaching and teaching! Life is good!

I hope to be around shortly sometime in the near future!